And it came sooner than she had expected. "Get ready," he said abruptly; "we shall be getting out directly." "Where?" she asked, startled. "At the junction, from where there's a loop line to Lischnitz." "Are we going to your estate, then?" she inquired anxiously. He had talked of going to Dresden. "No," he replied shortly; "we shall stay here." Then they stood on a dark platform with their trunks and bags. The frosty haze cast rainbow halos round the few dim gas-lamps, and shadowy forms were enveloped in clouds of their own frozen breath as they emerged into the light. The train steamed out of the station. There they stood and no one heeded them. Then the colonel uttered one oath after another. He had acquired the habit of swearing violently at drill, when irritated. His fury fell on Lilly like a thunderclap, and made her tremble, as if she were the culprit. At last the colonel's oaths reached the ears of the station officials, who associated them with something familiar in the past, and they began contritely to make amends for their negligence by loading themselves with the luggage. They got into the hotel omnibus which was waiting, and Lilly squeezed herself into the furthest corner of it. Weird shadows flickered from the miserable little oil carriage-lamps, on his sharply defined features, giving him a new aspect, beneath which his long-slumbering wrath still seethed. "What has this dreadful old man to do with you, or you with him," Lilly asked herself, a shiver running through her, "that you should be at his mercy so completely? Why not rush past him, tear open the door, and leap out into the night?" She pictured what would happen if she acted on this impulse. He would stop the omnibus, pursue her, calling and shouting after her, and, if she was so lucky as to hide herself, he would set the police on her track. The next morning she would be found cowering under an arch asleep, perhaps frozen to death. At that moment he stretched out his hands, groping for hers, as people in love are wont to do. The shadows dissolved and she responded to his caress, wreathed in smiles. Yet on their arrival at the hotel, where the proprietor, waiters, and commissionaires received them with deferential bows and an effusive welcome, Lilly's thoughts, in the midst of all the bustle, light, and warmth, reverted again to flight. "I'll say I have left something in the omnibus, run out and never come back." She was already ascending the stairs on his arm. A spacious, awe-inspiring apartment swallowed them up. It had a flowered carpet and a glaring three-armed chandelier. In one corner stood a huge wide bedstead, covered with a smooth white damask counterpane. It was carved at the head and foot. She looked round in vain for a second bed. "St. Joseph!" she breathed to herself.